


it's just a bunch of hocus pocus

by Azaphod



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Hocus Pocus (1993) AU, Inspired by Hocus Pocus (1993), Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27056281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azaphod/pseuds/Azaphod
Summary: “I thought this place would be...” Sasha starts, trailing off.“Spookier?”“Full of worms?”“Better smelling?”Sasha shoots them all an unimpressed look that is immediately ruined by her endeared smile. “...Better organized.” she finishes.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Sasha James/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker
Comments: 37
Kudos: 184
Collections: Repulsed/Averse Ace Jon Archivist





	it's just a bunch of hocus pocus

**Author's Note:**

> Literally what it says on the tin, Hocus Pocus au with S1 polycule. Jon and the assistants are independent paranormal investigators looking into a case follow up at the notorious Archives house. (This is practically crack due to the au source material ngl)
> 
> Now with [art](https://godshaper.tumblr.com/post/632237034019405825/whumptober-this-kinktober-that-the-real)

The moon is high in the almost cloudless sky, the air is chilled and casts a cold draft down the back of Jon’s neck as he carefully ducks between a kicked in portion of rotting fencing. He _really_ should have brought an axe or a crowbar. His leg is going to kill him for that later. 

He hovers awkwardly in front of the looming garden of gnarled and tangled brambles, dying clovers and nettles; the house spread out behind it like some great sleeping beast. His skin crawls, eyes darting to the dark shadows lurking ominously all around him. _Ridiculous_ , he thinks, scowling to himself as he rummages in his bag for a tape recorder. 

“Right, well.” Jon presses down on the record button. “Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, regarding the investigation into the Archives house, notorious sanctum for Jonah Magnus and his compatriots during their reign of terror in the eighteen hundreds-”

A twig snaps behind him, and he jumps about a foot in the air in his haste to turn around. 

It’s-- 

“ _Martin?_ ” Jon hisses out, unnecessarily. 

The man has the _audacity_ to jump as well, as if Jon was the one sneaking about in the bushes. “Oh! Shit.” 

Martin tumbles out of the brambles, looking disheveled covered in thorns and leaves. He rights his glasses, and offers a sheepish grimace. 

Jon does not let him get off lightly, “What the hell are you doing out here?” 

Martin wrings his hands, but he doesn’t otherwise bend under the weight of Jon’s glower. “We got worried! Af-after Prentiss and everything you shouldn’t be wandering around on your own.” 

Jon groans. The Prentiss Incident had been an unfortunate case of bullying, a couple of concerning text messages, and some mild stalking, but his _fellow associates_ had gotten wind of the Incident and promptly blew the entire thing out of proportion. He was more then capable of investigating location follow ups on his own without an entourage of worried assistants. 

He opens his mouth to say just as much, but his brain latches onto a single word. "Wait, 'we'?"

A bush to his right rustles.

“Oh, have we given up on stealth?” says the bush. 

The bush quakes ominously before expelling one Sasha James, and then, surprisingly, a Tim Stoker. Jon lets his gaze flick from the two of them and then back to comically small--and now slightly crushed--bush. Tim flashes him a dazzling smile. He ignores it. 

“As I’ve said before, I can handle this case on my own.” Jon says, pointedly, with barbs and thorns. “There _really_ was no need to follow me here. Or hide in _bushes_.”

“Don’t be mean, boss. We’re just trying to help--besides, you can think of it like a date night!” Tim suggests, though half his attention is turned to removing leaves from Sasha’s braids.

“Not very romantic.” Martin mutters. 

“Oh, you would know, wouldn’t you Mr Poet?” Sasha teases over Jon’s helpless protest; “This is not a date.”

Apparently satisfied with his work, Tim kisses Sasha on the cheek and steps back with a smile. “So! Let’s go, shall we?” 

He gives Martin a clap on the back, and smacks a big, disgustingly wet kiss on Jon’s cheek as well--Jon makes a loud retching noise in response, mostly out of habit--and he strides past them, whistling happily. 

“ _Supplemental_ ,”Jon snarks loudly into the recorder, pinning a glare to the backside of Tim’s head. “this investigation is now a group effort, as my partners apparently see me as a child. Though I _doubt_ we will need four people to search one old, decrepit building.” 

Tim dutifully waits for the recording to end before speaking up, his voice pitched down into a stage whisper, “Sources say it was built upon the bones of a hundred children!” 

He waggles his hands, making spooky ghost noises that sound loud and echoing in the cold courtyard. 

“I highly doubt that.” Jon says, willing to engage with whatever fooling around Tim has in mind if it means he has something else to focus on. 

“What? We’re ghost hunting and it’s Halloween! I think I’m allowed to embellish the spookiness.” Tim argues. 

“We are _not_ ghost hunting.” Jon denies immediately.

“Wait, we _aren’t?_ Then I _really_ need to update my resume,” Martin snorts. 

Jon stamps up the front stairs, muttering about _insubordination_ and _difficult partners_ under his breath until he is face to face with the large wooden door of the Archives house. It looks ancient, slabs of thick iron intertwined into the woodwork; it looks about as welcoming as a dead horse. 

“Don’t suppose you’ve got a key?” Martin asks, halfheartedly. 

Sasha waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t need one.” 

She pulls what looks to be a wallet out of the side of her tall boots, and drops to her knees by the keyhole. There is the light sound of something small and metal hitting the ground, a muffled swear, and then, finally, a decisive, satisfying _click_. She turns the doorknob, which gives an unearthly scream of rusted metal joints before acquiescing, revealing the pitch darkness of the Archives house.

“Sasha, you are possibly the smartest, most talented woman to ever walk the earth.” Tim exclaims. 

“Possibly?” she quips back. 

Jon struggles with his natural leaning to be a nosy git, about one hundred questions poised at the tip of his tongue for Sasha. He bites his curiosity back with a curt yet fond smile sent her way, a brief squeeze to her hand that has her _beaming_ with delight--and advances into the dark unknown before them. 

The house is cold, smelling slightly sour and damp with mildew. He swears it feels like the walls are breathing.

And, unfortunately, the place is absolutely covered in spiderwebs.

Jon _recoils_. “ _Ugh!_ ”

He steps back into Tim’s chest, who pats him sympathetically on the shoulder before squeezing past Jon and the doorway. 

“It’s been shut down for years, what were you expecting?” Tim snorts, peering into the dark, foreboding shadows surrounding the walls in search of a light switch. He strikes gold and the Archives are revealed, bathed in cheap, fluorescent light. 

“A ghostly janitor?” Martin suggests. He walks further in as well, and to Jon’s utter _horror_ , starts poking at the spiderwebs. “Half of these aren’t even real,” he says, nonchalantly elbow deep in white webbing. “See?” 

He swings an arm of cobweb their way. 

It is, admittedly, mostly made up of obviously fake, scratchy Halloween store cobwebs, complete with tiny plastic spider shaped blobs. Jon still lets out a garbled noise of panic that he tries to disguise as disgust, and glares. “Should have burnt this bloody place to the ground.”

“Well, you have options.” Sasha says brightly, pointing to an incredibly small gift shop crammed in a corner by the front door; to a display of stylized zippos. 

Jon gives the pathetic gift shop a disdainful look, dusty Halloween themed toys and trinkets sit in lonely rows by the ancient register, looking neglected and sad. His gaze keeps trailing back to the zippos. They’re dusty, but he can still make out the various ambiguous designs displayed on their sides. They all have the same simplistic style, vague, yet something tells him they follow a theme, even if he can’t discern what it is. One shows a red dripping knife, another a skull surrounded by inky tentacles, yet another is simply an unblinking eye. All fourteen sit untouched, forgotten.

Why had they left the unsold merchandise behind?

He pauses, then picks one out of the bunch, and pockets it. 

"So what, these guys were like witches? Wizards?" Martin asks, now struggling to untangle himself from the mixture of fake and not so fake cobwebbing.

"Something like that, the reports referred to them as ‘warlocks of Satan’ and all that. Who's to say whether or not they really messed with darker forces or simply had an aptitude for basic hygiene and a green thumb." Jon shrugs, skirting around a tall stack of papers that look dangerously close to exploding into dust or collapsing on top of him. “They did, however, hang for the kidnapping and murder of Elias Bouchard, so not entirely innocent.”

“I thought this place would be...” Sasha starts, trailing off. 

“Spookier?”

“Full of worms?”

“Better smelling?”

Sasha shoots them all an unimpressed look that is immediately ruined by her endeared smile. “...Better organized.” she finishes. 

Jon frowns at that, turning to survey the room critically. She’s right, the Archives are a total mess. At first he thought it was intentional; to make the place appear... _spookier_ , more real to the average simple minded horror fanatic. But besides the addition of the tiny, cramped gift shop, the odd display case, and the various plaques detailing the sordid lives of the Watchers, it’s clear the contents of the house hadn’t be disturbed for years--if at all. 

In the corners ancient papers sit haphazard upon tables and shelves, stacked so high they nearly brush the ceiling. Candle wax spills over the walls from the sconces onto the strange wall hangings, objects that look alien or just straight up absurd, nailed to the walls or resting on shelves. He feels an impulsive urge to touch them, and an equally strong urge to run very, very far away. 

And of course, sitting in the back of the room, the main attraction of the house; the coffin. 

Empty, of course. 

“Looks like Jon’s flat.” Tim says, effectively shattering the tension threatening to consume them. 

“ _Thank you,_ Tim.” Jon sighs, “Well, anything else of importance beside terrible interior design and organization? Can we leave?”

“Thought we were supposed to be following up on something,” Martin says, with a slight frown. 

“Yes, the disillusioned ramblings of an unfortunate youth who _might_ have _thought_ they saw something...lurking around the house, it’s not exactly the most promising.” Jon sighs, trailing a finger through a mote of dust. 

“But you still came out here to look.” Tim points out. 

Jon pointedly turns away from them, shoving his nose into a dusty corner under the guise of inspecting a bookshelf. “Because I’m good at my job.”

He can _feel_ them all share a look behind his back, but chooses to ignore them.

“What’s this then?” Sasha asks, peering into a dark display case, where a huge book sits. It’s cover is warped and wrinkled like skin, and buckled shut with an intricate, eye shaped lock. Sasha’s face goes from playfully curious to deadly serious. “‘From the library of Jurgen Leitner’?”

That had Jon’s spine stiffening, glancing at his partners and meeting their disbelieving, fearful faces, a mirror of his own, he expects. In their line of... _work_ , it was unfortunately common to stumble upon Leitners. They were all intimately familiar with the effects of such books. 

“What do you think this one does?” Martin asks, lip curled up in disgust. “Look at that cover, _ugh_.”

Tim purses his lips, “I mean, the Watchers were all about living forever, maybe it has something to do with that.”

“Should we like...burn it?” Sasha asks, her nails tapping out a nervous pattern on the dirty glass. “These things are dangerous, and if it was that easy to break in here...I’m worried some unsuspecting, stupid teenager might try to read it.”

They all regard each other silently for a moment, weighing their options. 

“Well, in for a penny.” Jon starts, slowly. 

“In for a pound.” Tim agrees. He turns around and grabs the closest thing to him--a plaque stand for the very book in question--and brings it crashing down onto the top of the display, sending glass flying everywhere. 

“Christ, Tim!” Martin hisses, picking shards out of the chords of his woolen jumper. 

“Sorry! Did the job though.” 

Sasha picks the book out of the wreckage as if it were an unstable explosive, holding it out at an arm's length and turning a helpless look to the three of them. Martin is the first to jump to action, grabbing a dust filled plastic bag from under the gift shop counter and holding it open for her to deposit the book.

The plastic bag sits innocently on the counter, four sets of eyes staring it down as if daring it try anything. 

Martin clasps his hands together a few times, “Shall we go do the deed then?”

There was nothing he wanted more then to leave and set the book on fire, but Jon shakes his head, “I want to look around, if there’s one Leitner, there might be more. It can’t hurt to be thorough.”

There is a general murmur of agreement, and they all begin to comb through the Archives wordlessly, _carefully_.

His search doesn’t reveal much; the pages littered about the house are nonsensical, describing impossible horrors and monsters beyond imagination. He tries not to read them as he sweeps them aside, checking the spines of books, carefully turning over sheafs of loosely tied together pages, looking for the familiar identifying plate. He finds several dead spiders and a couple of bones that might have once belonged to a mouse. 

The lack of anything at all sets him on edge. Paranoia creeps up his spine and settles in the base of his skull, pounding away painfully, his fingers shaking with it. That _couldn’t_ be it, there had to be more; other horrors hidden away, waiting and _watching_ him.

A laugh startles him out of his panic, grating against his overstimulated nerves horribly. He turns to round on his partners, already gearing up a nasty remark when he stops. 

They look happy.

Jon watches his partners; Martin, gently teasing Tim and Sasha, waving his hands around animatedly, and they’re all smiling. A warm, funny feeling rising in his chest, soothing over the frantic paranoia that had gripped him so tightly--though it quickly sours. He doesn’t understand how it all comes so easily to them, how they all fit together like puzzle pieces while he feels like--like someone who doesn’t belong. 

Too prickly, too closed off. Never been very funny or interesting, always talking over others and incapable of detecting sarcasm.Out of place, _unwanted_ and _lacking_.

His jacket catches on one of the plaques, and he turns with a start to untangle himself. He glances at the plaque, which reads ‘THE BLACK FLAME CANDLE’ in bold print, followed by a scrawl of smaller text, and then to the thick candle standing tall next to it. It looks different to the rest lining the walls, someone had gone to the painstaking task of carving spiderwebs and symbols into the wax. It also stinks of fat and sweat, uncomfortably human. 

He shakes himself slightly, wrestling his frown away and pulling himself together. He could be light hearted and funny, he’ll show them. 

“This might be something,” he says, drawing their attention. Jon clears his throat and drops his voice down to something that crawls and slithers, and reads the rest of the plaque aloud to them. “‘Legend has it that the black flame candle will raise the spirits of the dead when lit by a virgin on all hallows night.’” He snorts, what an odd prerequisite. 

Then he looks up at his partners, feeling an impossible impulse wash over him. His pocket suddenly feels very heavy, so he takes out the zippo and flicks it idly, watching the flame flicker and grins. “So let's light this sucker and meet the old bastards.” 

There is a tense pause, three sets of eyes staring at him with varying states of incredulity. Then there is an explosion of laughter. Mainly from Tim. 

“Oh my _god_ , boss.” he wheezes, bent in half and dumping most of his considerable weight and height onto a struggling Martin, who seems torn between alarm and stifling his own giggles. “That was _so_ lame.”

Martin wipes at his face, still sort of laughing under his breath but his eyebrows furrow together with concern, his expression adapting into something soft and pacifying. Jon bristles instantly, instinctively, hackles raised. 

“I-Well if it’s that much of a laughing matter-” Jon sniffs, haughtily, prickling with embarrassment. He brings his hand dangerously close to the candlewick. 

Sasha flaps a hand in the air, “ _Jon_ , don’t.”

“Now hold on a minute--” Martin starts. 

Tim tries to speak over him, “--really don’t you should be messing with that--”

“--it’s all just a bunch of _hocus pocus_ anyways.” Jon concludes. 

And he lights the candle. 

Nothing happens. 

Jon flips the zippo off, and the candle flame goes black. 

“Oh dear.” 

A long, agonized groan shudders through the building, unending and raising the hairs on the back of Jon’s neck. The floor beneath him creaks in response, quaking and jittering under his feet so violently he stumbles, trying to stay upright. Sasha yelps, falling into Martin and they cling to each other, watching in horror as the room comes to life.

The candles along the walls rattle in their sconces, one by one filling the room with an eerie, orange glow. Books go flying off their shelves at random, and even the spiderwebs seem to expand and grow, stretching across the ceiling beams and entangling with the sprinkler system. The door rattles on its hinges, as if something huge and monstrous were on the other side, demanding to be let in. 

Then, as soon as it had come, the Archives fell deathly silent. They all stand there, wild eyed and tense.

“What the hell just happened?” Martin croaks out, one hand anchored to a pillar, the other holding tightly to Sasha. 

Sasha has gone ghastly pale, “A virgin lit the candle.”

There came a clattering noise, and they turned as one toward the door. Then, a faint, almost inaudible squeak of metal.

_Someone was turning the doorknob._

Tim dives under the counter, dragging Sasha along with him. Martin panics briefly, then throws himself behind a shelf, pressing up against the wall and shooting Jon a wild, terrified look. 

Jon feels both his fight and flight instincts waging war within him, and he _freezes_.

“ _Jon!_ ” Martin hisses, and the door opens.

Three figures loom in the open doorway, their features silhouetted sharply by the sudden crackle of lightning-- _funny, it hadn’t been raining when they got there_ \--and Jon catches sight of a horrific, smug grin in the brief flash of light. 

The man sweeps through the darkness past his fellows into the house, his movements fluid and confident with familiarity. His clothes might have once been sharp, but time had turned them ragged and worn, as if they had spent centuries in the dirt. He brushes a nimble, clawed hand over the gift shop counter with disgust and a touch of confusion, then zeroes in on the shattered glass display. 

The other men flow in behind him, bringing with them a draft of cold wind and creeping fog. One of them surveys the house with an air of disinterest, completely ignoring the constant chatter of the other man beside him, who is short and thin where he is tall and big. The smaller man practically dances as he careens around the house, pausing to grab things off the walls and shelves with exclamations of delight or surprise. 

He gets dangerously close to Martin’s hiding spot, and Jon holds his breath. But he passes by without a second glance, suddenly distracted. 

“Oh, my!” Simon Fairchild crows, “We have a _guest_.” 

And suddenly the combined focus of the three snaps to Jon, still standing next to the candle, clutching a stolen lighter with a spiderweb design in his hands.

“Ah.” says the smiling man, behind him, Fairchild sings _‘A guest! A guest! A guest-!’_ ’ “The virgin.”

Jon holds still as Jonah Magnus’ gaze takes him in, full of predatory delight, and keeps taking, moving closer and closer. He holds still, even as his brain screams and his bad knee twitches with pain. He holds completely, perfectly still, as the dead man circles him slowly, then comes to stare him in the eye, less then a foot away, smelling of coppery blood. 

“I am right, aren’t I? You opened the door for us, so to speak.” Magnus says, sharply. 

“Yes,” Jon gasps out, as though the answer had been pulled from his skull. 

Magnus’ smile grows, if possible, ever wider.

“Thank you so much for lighting the candle for us.” Magnus says, his breath disturbing Jon’s curls, “And for sticking around afterwards, I am in _dire_ need of a new body, I think yours shall do nicely.” 

That has Jon’s legs finally unfreezing, adrenaline shooting through him and blood rushing in his ears, he dodges away from the man and dashes for the door. He gets halfway before the world wrenches out from under him. 

“Whoa, there! Where are you going? We’re just getting to the fun part.” Fairchild pouts, and suddenly Jon is falling, his stomach lurching painfully and he can’t breathe. He tries to turn and look for his partners but there is nothing but unending sky; beautiful, terrible cerulean, then bruised orange and red, then inky black void, starless, infinite.

And he is falling. He’s falling and falling and _falling_ \--

“Leave him alone!” 

Jon drops awkwardly to his knees, the bad one flaring lances of agony up his leg, but he simply sits there, gasping lungful's of air between his whimpers and clutching at the grimy floor beneath him. Above him, Martin has brained Simon Fairchild with a fire extinguisher. 

He goes down with a grunt, but rolls to his feet far quicker then he rightly should for his age.

 _They’re supposed to be dead._ Jon retches.

The great ship of a man-- _that must be Peter Lukas_ , his mind provides, helpfully--scowls beneath his beard, one big hand reaching out to grab for Jon, but Sasha reacts quicker, grabbing her own extinguisher, squeezing the levers and releasing a blast of CO2 that staggers the man backward. A startled, almost fearful look appears on Lukas’ face. 

“Stay back or-or--” Sasha stutters, brandishing her fire extinguisher like a gun. “Or you’ll face the wrath of our Freeze Vortex Death Rays.” 

Tim’s head whips around and he shoots Sasha a look that quite effectively conveys ‘ _ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?’_

But it _works_. Already Fairchild and Lukas are skirting away from them, eyeing the fire extinguishers with concern. Because of course they would, they’ve been dead for centuries; maybe those bright red instruments _are_ Freeze Vortex Death Rays. How would they _know?_

This information slowly dawns on the rest of them, and Martin uses the distraction to haul Jon to his feet. They start creeping backwards, away from the risen dead who glower at them from the shadows, furious but hesitant to test their luck. 

“Leaving so soon?” Magnus calls, as Tim pushes Sasha through the front door. 

“Fuck you.” Tim snaps back, slightly nonsensically, and he smacks the fire alarm. 

The Watchers look up in bewilderment as the ceiling promptly starts raining. 

Jon turns to the door and immediately slips on a stray stack of papers, falling flat on his back and taking half a shelf of books down with him in his mad scramble to save himself. A heavy black book thuds into his stomach and he wheezes, winded. The book falls open in his lap as he sits up, and the pages shimmer darkly. He barely has time to flinch before a ghastly form emerges; a torso leans out, solidifying thick arms and finally, a face. It looks incredibly pissed. 

“Nice going, _Jon_.” The book ghost grates out with a _furious_ sneer. The ghost has a tongue piercing. 

“ _What the fuck-?_ ” Tim exclaims loudly over the sprinklers, just as Jon goes; “How do you know my name--?”

“Get the Leitner!” the ghost cuts them off, smacking a pale, tattooed hand into Jon’s shoulder ineffectually. “Move it!”

Jon leaps to his feet, grasping the book in his hands so tightly he doesn’t think he’d be able to drop it if he wanted to. He looks around wildly for the plastic gift shop bag and spots it on the floor by the counter. He scrambles across the room for it.

Tim and Sasha watch him as he goes, and move in near perfect synchronization to cover him, keeping Fairchild and Lukas at bay. Magnus just stands there.

His hands touch the bag, and through thin plastic he feels the mangled, raised edges of the Leitner. How it feels warm, and living, like a flayed open flank of flesh. Jon gathers it up in his arms, and something inside him...twinges. Like a lock clicking open. He can feel eyes burning into him, and he looks up.

Magnus stares back at him from across the room; anger, fear, and a flicker of something like morbid curiosity battling it out across the plains of his aged face. His mouth curls up into a sinister smile. “I'll be wanting that back, Jon.”

Jon stands there, paralyzed, until Martin’s hand shoots out and drags him bodily backwards, clutching the Leitner and the mystery book close to his chest, unable to break eye contact with the once dead man. 

“Go, go _, go, go, go--_ ” someone rambles, and suddenly everything is moving _very_ quickly.

Jon loses track of everything that isn’t running, time slipping away as they all trip down the stairs and out the front gate; their shoes loud on the pavement, lungs screaming for air, until he can just about hear the sound of cars and arguing from the shop fronts in the distance, the confirmation that reality had not just turned entirely upside down for the rest of the world.

Eventually they slow. They all stand huddled together, panting and shooting terrified looks over their shoulders. Sasha is bent over her knees, coughing and swearing quietly, one hand twisted awkwardly up to grip Tim’s arm as he leans over all three of them, as if to shield them from sight. 

Martin’s shoulder is pressed tightly against his own, their fingertips bumping into each other, shaking. Jon takes a painfully deep breath, and grabs Martin’s hand before he can second guess himself, and squeezes lightly. 

Martin squeezes back. 

The book still clutched the death grip in Jon’s free hand shudders, the case pushing against Jon’s hold until it sits splayed open in his palm, face up. The apparition materializes once again, his long black hair cascading gently over one semi-transparent shoulder. 

“You just _had_ to go and light the candle.” the ghost heaves a sigh, “Right, well. I guess we have to save the world now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Also if anyone wants more of this like....yell at me about it. Yall can find me on tumblr @godshaper
> 
> (For the super nerds, the cast:
> 
> Jon - Max  
> Martin + Tim + Sasha - Dani / Alison  
> Magnus - Winifred  
> Lukas - Mary  
> Simon - Sarah  
> Gerry - Binx)


End file.
